The Woman in the Yard - Review

Horror has often been regarded as popcorn entertainment. A genre of cheap thrills without much substance, however, the great horrors buck the trend and are films with distinct fable-like narratives that penetrate a prevalent thematic topic. The Woman in the Yard attempts to be one of these profound pictures. The film takes an important theme prevalent in today’s culture, but unfortunately, it is the execution of The Woman in the Yard which lets the film down.

The film opens with Ramona (Danielle Deadwyler), a widowed mother living in her husband’s dreamhouse on a rural ranch. The house is in disrepair, with her son, Taylor (Peyton Jackson) acting as the man of the house – he makes breakfast and makes sure the dog is fed before his mum gets out of bed. Also living there is Ramona’s young daughter Annie (Estella Kahiha). Atmospherically, there is a post-apocalyptic nature to the film, the farmhouse at times feels like it is in its own bracketed world, a world where they are unable to leave to do basic groceries and where the power is out. However, this appears not to be the case as the film continues. But one day a woman is suddenly sat a few meters outside their house, telling Ramona “Today is the day”.

The Woman in the Yard is a slow-paced horror chiller. There aren’t really too many scares here, apart from the odd abrupt jump that is just the film’s visual style tricking you into a scare. Instead, it is a film trying to create an atmosphere. As we come to learn, Ramona’s husband died in a car incident, and she is left to pick up the scraps, unhappy living in the house and in some ways unfit to be a mother due to her deteriorating mental health. However, the film takes a while to get to these points, as the dull pacing and narrative left me drifting in and out of the film. The visual style doesn’t help as any form of background is blurred out with uninteresting shallow focus, making the house not feel truly lived in.  

It is only towards the last 20 minutes where things slowly come together, but even then the final act is confusing, throwing your head around in discombobulating fashion where you question whether each subsequent scene is actually just a dream. Meanwhile, when it gets to its climactic thematic peak it is a moment that feels borderline insensitive – surely there must have been a better way to go about the thematic threads that the filmmakers wish to tackle.

There is no doubt that The Woman in the Yard is at the very least a thematically ambitious film. It is challenging in its slow, atmospheric pacing, which lacks tense execution. However, these bold swings don’t quite come off, leaving you to feel that the buildup was lethargic and the conclusion painfully misguided.